E3 2004: Ghost Recon 2

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Red Storm sends the force out again.

By Steve Butts

When, oh when, will those North Korean rogue generals ever learn? It's bad enough that one would usurp power to begin with but then, when China decides to initiate an arms embargo against them, he starts buying up lots of weapons from the Russians and then launches an assault on the Chinese nation. The UN decides it's time to send in the Ghosts to teach this particular North Korean rogue general the meaning of covert insertion.

There are fifteen total missions in the game and this time around they won't be as narrowly or obviously scripted. Mission objectives will seem much more dynamic now and will change and update as the mission progresses. We saw the first mission in the game, which involves a Ghost raid on an airfield. The British SAS have been sent in to clear an airfield and you'll be working in concert with them. Midway through the mission a sniper begins taking out British soldiers and it's up to you to take him out. Trying to manage this while mortar rounds explode around you and tanks rumble across the tarmac is a job and a half.

As usual, you'll be leading a small squad of specialists against a much larger enemy force. Your forces are even smaller than they were last time. Rather than leading two or three teams of six operatives against the enemy, in Ghost Recon 2 you'll be handling a single squad of four, including you. The idea here is to keep the player where the action is. Though it was tactically rewarding to maneuver separate squads around the maps in the first game, it sometimes meant that the player missed out on a particularly exciting engagement.

Though you can't split them up, you can definitely order your squad around quite a bit. A simply radial menu gives you access to a complete list of orders allowing you to send your squad to circle around the enemy to the left or right, to suppress an enemy position. You can even order them to escort or protect certain targets. Even though you can do quite a bit with the squad, you don't have to tell them to do everything. They'll manage going prone on their own, for instance. Your squad and even those of your enemies will also instinctively act cooperatively.

To add a little more personality and character to the game, Red Storm will be adding a little, well, personality to the characters. There are seven total Ghosts to choose from on each mission and, since you can only take three, you'll need to match the forces available to the mission at hand. Derek Parker is your grenadier, ready to take on harder targets. For engagement at longer ranges, you'll need the talents of your marksman, Alicia Diaz. Joe Salvatore is the team's gunner, relying on his trusty M249.

Though these ghosts have unique weapons, you'll mostly be using the XM8, the new assault rifle that our own Army has decided will replace the M4 starting next year. This new weapon, developed in concert with the OICW featured in the previous Ghost Recon, has a modular structure, allowing it to be adapted for sharp shooting and other specialized roles.

By default, the game is played in an over-the-shoulder view and you'll be able to aim down the barrel for long-range shots. You have the option to switch to a first-person view (and even enforce it in multiplayer) but if you go to first-person, you'll be missing out on some of the new effects. Red Storm chose the view because it allows for a lot more character. You can see your Ghost react to nearby explosions or give hand signals. This, along with a bit of a camera shake when bombs go off, should definitely increase the feeling of war.

The animations in the game that we've seen are very realistic. Special forces soldiers did the motion capture for the soldiers' moves so all the leans and not-jumping you see in the game is authentic. A ragdoll physics system takes over if they get hit. Havoc-powered physics manage the explosions in the environment as well, adding even more realism as the environment crumbles around you. Imagine an air control tower collapsing beside you on the battlefield and you get a sense of how intense this game can be.

A new multi-texturing process has the graphics looking better than ever. Overall things are much shinier and more detailed overall. Character animations are solid and, given the third-person focus of the game, you'll have ample opportunity to see them up close.

The team isn't talking much about multiplayer yet but, given the popularity of the first game on PC and Xbox, the game definitely has a lot of potential. Right now the team is simply promising that this will be a must-have title, particularly for the Xbox Live 3.0 support.

We'll be sure to bring you even more details as soon as we can get them.